There are many automatic electrical component assembly machines wherein the components are advanced from a magazining device to an assembly apparatus which functions to place the components at selected locations in or on an electrical unit, such as a printed circuit board or substrate. One such machine is manufactured by the Universal Instruments Company of Binghamton, N.Y. and sold under the designation Model 6794 component insertion machine. In automatic assembly machines of this type, components to be assembled are loaded in plastic magazine tubes having cross-sectional configurations conforming to the outline of the components to be assembled.
One of the difficulties in the use of such magazining devices resides in the loading and unloading of the magazine tubes without spilling the components. More particularly, the loading of a magazine tube is usually accomplished by horizontally placing the tube in the magazining device and then pivoting the tube to a vertical position where the stack of components drop through a passageway formed in a receiver so that the lower-most component is held in position to be extracted by a feed device for transport to the automatic assembly facilities. Considerable time and care must be used to effectuate such a loading operation without spilling the components. A further problem exists when it is desired to remove the magazine tube prior to the exhaustion of the stack of components in the tube. This removal operation is time consuming and again considerable care must be exercised to avoid excessive spillage of the components in the magazine tube.